Adventure | S6

Did Google Get Trumped?

It was widely said: You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t Google all of the people all of the time. So did Samsung really pop Google with an Android performance fix for their lineup of Galaxy mobile phones? A fix that targets the operating system memory issue? Did Samsung… Donald Google?

Do you think for one moment that Google would allow another company to actually modify code at the core level of it’s market dominating Android operating system? Doing so would amount to a completely new version of Android, copyright issues and loss of control for Google. What do you think? I think Not!

Two Scenarios

In my mind their are only two possible scenarios that may explain what really happened behind the scenes and why it may appear to some that Google was trumped by Samsung in fixing the Lollipop memory bug.

Samsung Covers For Google

The fist of two likely options is that the fix is actually just a temporary work-around patch application that installs on top of the actual unmodified Google Android operating system; much like any other 3rd party software. If Google were to release an application like this it would have the effect of making their OS appear less than perfect to all of the people. So by agreement Google may have collaborated with Samsung to release a temporary application that would help to release memory and restore performance. Samsung comes out looking heroic in the media and receives untold marketing value pushing the release of their new Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge cell phones. Older Galaxy S models are now also being updated to Lollipop presumably because a fix is now available.

Meanwhile, Google can continue to develop core code to overcome the memory loss issues and quietly release a better fix in a future update. But none the less, Samsung deserves big Kudos for possibly developing and distributing this performance restoring application even though Google may have had a hand in it; or more likely, hands completely wrapped around.

Clever Win-Win Samsung-Google Public Relations

The second of two probable options would be that if the actual core code of the Android operating system was updated then it’s pretty much a slam dunk that Google actually developed the code for this performance fixing update and delivered it to Samsung for first roll-out by special agreement. Why?

Well, if I were Google, I wouldn’t want all of the people to realize my Android operating system had performance issues. So, leveraging my brightest thinkers and my best public relations artisans I would come up with a creative win-win marketing strategy for rolling out this better late than never performance restoring software update. Too bad it may have taken Google this long to come up with a strategy that could shield them from fault and at the same time provide favorable publicity for a top tier business partner.

Either way, Samsung appears to me to have been used by Google for cover.